Cover

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all those who have helped
with this book. Those deserving special mention include
my wife, Christine, for her constant support
and guidance; James Stromberg, who provided the
foundation and inspiration; ...

1. Introduction

I once sat on a bioethics panel in which a member opined that
he had discovered the most profound insight while watching a
documentary in which the closing shot asks the question, “Is
there an absolute truth?” The narrator steps down a hill into a
swamp and scoops up some of the slime. ...

2. Ethics and the Good Life

In the Republic Plato has Glaucon build upon an earlier argument
of Thrasymachus; he asks us to imagine one person who
is perfectly unjust and another who is perfectly just. The perfectly
unjust person, he says, will rise to power through unjust
means, but because he is so perfect at his injustice, he will never
get caught. ...

3. Reason and the Emotions

We have all heard the saying, “If it feels good, do it,” but we
probably wouldn’t associate it with ethics or morality. Indeed,
it seems like a recipe for disaster. Raping feels good to rapists,
killing feels good to serial killers, and tyrannizing others probably
felt good to Hitler and Stalin. ...

4. Conscience and Choice

Have you ever heard it said, “All that matters in ethics is that
you do what you believe to be right”? Or “Just follow your conscience”?
Seems like sound advice. Unfortunately, too often the
seed of truth within these sayings is distorted into a denial of
all morality. ...

5. Loving and Choosing

The will plays a central part in the moral life, and yet many people
want to deny that we have a will. They say that we are merely
complicated animals, whose emotions are less inborn and more
learned than in other animals. Nevertheless, they are inborn,
and they are learned. ...

6. Doing Right and Desiring Right

We haven’t yet discovered whether I took the twenty dollars or returned
it. Recall that the teller gave me the extra twenty; with my
reason I judged that it was fair to return it, but in my emotions
I longed to keep it, so that I was beginning to rationalize. What,
ultimately, do I do? ...

7. Virtue and the Emotions

Ethics is sometimes presented as a series of complicated and difficult
choices, for which we must become adept at sophisticated
mental techniques. We are asked, “Is capital punishment justified?”
“Should we legalize euthanasia?” “Is abortion morally
wrong?” “Should we censor pornography?” ...

8. Justice

The antithesis to the virtue of justice is probably realized in the
modern ethical theory called utilitarianism, as well as its many
offspring, which go by the name of consequentialism. For while
the virtue of justice seeks to treat others with equity and fairness,
utilitarianism disregards equality for the sake of quantity. ...

9. Injustice

If justice is equality, then injustice is inequality, which is derived
from the closely related word “iniquity.” Injustice treats
others as tools, mere instruments for the sake of some further
good. The unjust person sets himself above others as the arbiter
of their destinies. ...

10. Intrinsically Evil Actions

Utilitarianism denies that any actions are universally wrong,
no matter the circumstances. Take killing the innocent, for instance.
Many people, Thomas included, would say we must never
kill an innocent human being. ...

11. Virtue and Truth

Ethics does not tell us the truths of science; it does not teach us
mathematics or physics; nor does it teach us how to be a doctor
or an architect. We might be surprised to find, then, that
Aquinas lists science as a virtue, and that various skills, such
as medicine or architecture, also count as virtues (I-II, 57). ...

12. Practical Wisdom

We have already suggested that ethics is more than resolving
complicated moral questions, for even after the questions are
answered, the choices must be made. Those choices, we have
seen, will be heavily influenced by our habits of desiring. ...

13. Ethics and Knowledge

In our discussion of ethics we have asserted that some things are
right and others wrong. We have said, for instance, that we ought
to have fair exchanges with others, that we ought to conform our
desires with reason, and that we ought to work toward the common
good. ...

14. Ethics and Happiness

We are now prepared to answer Glaucon’s and Thrasymachus’s
question. Which way of life is the happier and more profitable,
the unjust life or the just life? You will recall that Thrasymachus
thought that the unjust life was happier, because the perfectly
unjust man is never caught, ...

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